Mission to restore Worcester's war memorials is launched

Worcester Civic Society is embarking on a new project to record the condition of all the memorials in the city as part of an initiative which will seek to restore and preserve them for posterity.

The civic society will be working with Historic England, The War Memorial Trust and the project will be overseen by Civic Voice, the umbrella organisation for Civic Societies.

The Civic Society need volunteers to assist with this project which hopefully will start in the next couple of months.

Worcester Civic Society chairman Phil Douce said: "The exercise will involve visiting the war memorials, assessing their condition and recording them onto the trust's website.

"We are fortunate to have a database of sites already in existence provided by Sandra Taylor and her fantastic web site "Remember the Fallen" (www.rememberthefallen.co.uk).

"We will be using this to revisit the sites, record their condition and update the information. There is a £4 million fund available to repair any memorials that require it."

In 1999 Sandra Taylor became a volunteer fieldworker for the National Inventory of War Memorials (NIWM) and began recording and transcribing the war memorials in Worcester and the surrounding area.

Once this appeared to be completed, Sandra decided that the names she had recorded deserved to be researched in order to ‘bring to life’ those commemorated rather than just remaining as a name carved on a memorial.

This has resulted in a wealth of information and memorabilia that is now freely available due to generous funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Anyone interested in helping with this latest project can contact Phil Douce by emailing phildouce68@gmail.com or on 07760 352086.

Once there are sufficient volunteers the Civic Society will be organising a workshop in Worcester which will be run by Civic Voice with help from Historic England and The War Memorial Trust.